Portugal debacle shows traffic light system risks another chaotic summer
There was something inevitable about the government’s decision to remove Portugal from the UK’s quarantine-free travel list last night.
Despite hopes that more countries could be added to the list, by the afternoon, holidaymakers, airline bosses and travel firms were once again facing the realisation that their best laid plans had once again been trampled on.
In their defence, ministers will point to the fact they have consistently said they would not hesitate to remove countries from the “green list” should the data demand it.
That it may do: without being privy to the details of the decision making process or the full set of data used, it is impossible for anyone to say for sure.
And while operating with an abundance of caution is understandable after the mistakes of the last year, it raises the prospect of another summer of last minute cancellations and midnight dashes for the border.
When he laid out the recommendations of the government’s specially set-up Global Travel Taskforce in April, Shapps stressed that one of the main goals of the system was to give customers confidence to book and travel again.
Central to this was the plan to set up a “watch list” to keep track of countries at risk of moving from one category to another, in order to “give travellers confidence about the likelihood of changes”.
Why, then, was the transport secretary hinting heavily up until two weeks ago that more countries would be added to the quarantine-free list “very soon” when the very opposite turned out to be true?
And why, with the knowledge that Ryanair and Easyjet had between them added hundreds of extra flights to Portugal to cope with demand, did ministers not put Portugal on the watch list as soon as the first concerns over the increase in cases were aired? Or at the very least give airline bosses – who have repeatedly complained of being ignored by the government – a heads-up to avoid the last-minute scramble to repatriate Brits worried about being stuck abroad?
That the governing style of the Johnson administration is to delay until the decision has already been made by circumstance alone is an argument that has been trotted out ad nauseam over the last year.
But where it is possibly most damaging is that it strips ordinary people of the autonomy to take responsibility for themselves. Yes, the prospect of a trip to sunny Portugal is almost irresistible right now. But most people would find themselves quickly turned off from the prospect – the government’s desired result – if they knew 10 days in quarantine was even a possibility.
Publish the data in full, at regular intervals, and let people understand how the decisions are taken. Use the “watch list” as it was presumably designed to be used. Then we can decide for ourselves on the level of risk and cost we are prepared to bear in order to travel.